Yesterday I was installing new brake lines into my 1954 Willys CJ-3B, and while it was quite a simple job, there is one section of the car that’s just a massive pain in the butt, and it got me thinking about all the engineering packaging decisions that have compromised serviceability and thus lost me hours of my time.
Specifically, where the brake master cylinder bolts to the frame is a bit of a shitshow on an old Willys Jeep. The master cylinder is sandwiched between a bracket and the frame via two bolts that thread into — often brake inside of (after rusting) — the frame. Since my Jeep is from California, I narrowly managed to thread those two bolts out, but once the master cylinder was in, routing new brake lines was rough.
The thing about new brake lines is that they’re rarely perfect, meaning you have to fine-tune some of the bends to get them to meet the fittings. My issue was that the brake line has to go through a small hole in my frame before immediately mating up to the master cylinder. Here you can see it from up top”
Here’s a side view:
And here’s a little closer look:
Trying to bend the line, then thread it through that small hole (which already has a hose going through it) took me forever, especially since the fitting was right there after the bend, and especially since I had to do this while on my back.
Another classic example of a packaging decision that has ruined a few of my afternoons is the oil filter housing location on post-~1992 Jeep Cherokee XJs. These things leak like a sieve, and to fix them one has to remove the oil filter adapter from the engine block; it’s held on by a single torx bolt, whose head is so ridiculously close to the unibody rail that you have to either buy a special tool (shown below) or custom-make your own tool to remove it.
I myself had to buy a torx socket, cut it down with an angle grinder, then use a box wrench to just barely fit between that rail and the oil filter adapter.
Don’t even get me started on the upper shock bolts on the Jeep Cherokee XJ, which tend to break in the weld nuts captured in the unibody. The result? You have to use an air chisel to break the weld nut and then you have to fish the nut and broken bolt out from behind. Then you have to fish a new bolt in through the top and hold it in place while you thread a nut on — it’s rough, as YouTuber D&E In The Garage shows below:
And then there was my multi-day nightmare with my Chevy HHR control arms!
As with many wrenching endeavors, if you have the right tools is key, and once you’ve figured out how to do it the first time subsequent fixes are usually much easier.
Still, this is a thread for us to complain about tight packaging making repair jobs a bear, so have at it in the comments!
Heater core on an ’81 Mustang. Had to pull the whole dash. Was 18 years old back then (1980s) and got it done but ridiculous amount of work. Pre-internet so I was reinventing the process.
Broken wheel stud on our ’14 MDX. Had to remove the entire hub assembly to press out the lub to press out the stud. Could have cut the stud out but no way to get the new one in. Had to cut the stuck ball joint too then. Wound up installing new shocks and lower control arms since I was already there. Was a several week project working around my spare time, the weather, parts wait, and a fair bit of cussing. It all turned out fine. Still driving it today. It is our road trip car so I didn’t need it by Monday.
The most recent one that really annoyed me was swaybar end links on a mazda. Instead of wrench flats it has a spot for an allen wrench in the end of the stud. Obviously this strips if the nuts are seized. Can’t use heat without ruining the ball joint. Every other car I have worked on has had wrench flats or a through-bolt. The aftermarket replacement even had wrench flats.
Yep, that was the job that made me finally buy a Sawzall
Starter on a BMW 135i (at least with the N55 and DCT) – Everything is nice and accessible once you’ve removed a bunch of other things (annoying, but SOP), up to and including the lower bolt on the starter. However, you get at the upper one through a small hole on the front of the bell housing cover just aft of and below the sharp bottom of the firewall, with just enough clearance to allow 1/16 of a turn of the thinnest box end you own. Assembly is the reverse of removal.
Replacing the evaporator in my 1978 Ford. Best way was to remove the seats then lay on the floor working under the dash to remove everything through a head-sized hole in the firewall while also being outside the vehicle making sure the aged and brittle plastic housing in the engine bay didn’t get damaged.
Also fitting on a modern stock replacement with slightly different measurements than OEM was even worse than the disassembly.
PFFFT
Go change the PCV valve on a Wrangler with the 3.6 Pentastar..hint: It is at the rear of the passenger side valve cover…. and it projects into the cam, so you have to remove the (2) 10 mm long T25 torx screws, toward the firewall with about 11 mm clearance.
Then pull the valve out toward sthe firewall.
Then put the new on in, no biggie, but then thread them 2 bolts back into the rear side of the valve cover.
I ended up with a special cut off torx bit and box end wrench just like DT’s XJ oil filter adapter setup.
for a flippin PCV valve!!!
ya ya ya I know…. first world problems…
Well my car has a transversely-mounted Yamaha V8 attached to a Haldex AWD system. Which is great. But now when it comes time to do some of the engine seals (which is nearly 20 years into its life) it becomes a bit of a job. Plus the oil from the valve covers can contaminate the alternator, which is less than ideal.
I should have had it done already but life keeps pushing it off. And of course my shop just raised their labor rate.
Not my car, but about 20 years ago I had to do an oil change on a late-’80s/early-’90s audi sedan, and the oil filter was essentially inside the front bumper. It was so dumb. Apparently the recommended service procedure (unbeknownst to me as a young entry-level tech who hadn’t worked on weird German cars nearly as old as himself) was to remove the front bumper.
WTFF.
For an oil change.
Wish Chevy didn’t shove the distributor on the rear of engines, especially in their trucks. I’m a big dude, but it is a major reach for me to reach plug wires etc on my 454 in my K2500.
My car? Umm… my daily is a Toyota, so nothing comes to mind except the rear motor mount. My pickup is a 4.3L Sonoma… so it’s kind of shoved in there.
No, the worst are the ones I work on for a living, mainly German stuff and anything Daimler-Chrysler, Cerberus, Fiat-Chrysler, Stellantis, or whatever fucking name they’re going by this week can dream up.
The Ford Econoline: An unfortunate series of conflicting engineering compromises packaged into a van.
(literally everything)
Counterpoint: it’s comfortable, and when it’s working you feel like a god!
Beyond cheating and saying “heater cores”, I’ve rarely had to deal with these kinds of issues myself.
I also know you need a special tool to remove the rear shocks on an E-series. Or you can substitute a “blue-tip wrench.”
> special tool to remove the rear shocks on an E-series
im sorry what
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/473827-e150-rear-shock-replacement-2.html
Maybe I’m exaggerating; I repeated what a friend told me when he was trying to help me with mine before we gave up. But I at least see some shared frustration with the process in that forum post ^
Nonetheless, yes, I do sympathize with what you said about them. I owned a conversion ’97 with the 4.6l for 7 years and I loved the thing, except for all the things that broke. Never the engine or transmission, just the weirdest or most unexpected crap like the vapor can vent valve getting clogged twice.
The final straw was a rattling catalytic converter…the one that had been replaced 3 years prior…with a 2 year warranty.
The other was still original. This was in 2019. (And I’m in an emissions county.)
The heater core in my car is a 2 hour job if it’s your first time, and even less if the person doing them has done a few before. It comes out like a big videocassette from the middle of the center console.
Interesting. I would assume yours is an exception, though.
https://www.theautopian.com/why-swapping-a-heater-core-is-one-of-the-most-miserable-car-repairs/
Yes, it is.
https://youtu.be/2j_Jqi1yGtk for someone’s video calling it “the world’s easiest” heater core. Dunno if that’s true, but they sure made it fairly straightforward.
2nd gen Suzuki Grand Vitara with the V6 oil filter.
It’s attached facing the bottom like many engines. Easy access, IF you have a RHD version.
On the LHD version, the steering gear moves to the LHS.
Now, if you’re the proverbial hard working 90 pound Philipino mechanic (my local garage had one), your arm can get a bit squeezed between the exhaust and steering shaft to reach the filter with your fingertips.
Most mechanics (and me) have bigger arms so we have to go from the top.
Grab your 2 step ladder and lay on top of the engine, reach down the left side near the firewall and find the filter by feel. You now have almost zero leverage to spin it off. Once you get it off, your only real option is to drop it as the hole your arm is in barely fits your hand. Oh, did I mention that you’ll be running you arm along an exhaust header?
Now, gingerly hold a new filter with your fingertips and go back down the hole and curse as you’re blindly trying the thread the filter on.
Everything else I ever needed to do on that truck was super easy.
BTW, big forearms are great for arm wrestling, but suck for working on a car.
I love this, because the same vehicle with the 2.0 4cyl is by FAR the easiest to swap filters on out of the cars I have.
Probably the inspiration for gm’s engineers to make “the devil’s butthole” on the FWD-based 3.6L V6 engines, most notoriously on the Lambda platform crossovers (Acadia, enclave, outlook, and travesty).
Wait, is that the term for it? I know a guy whose first burn scar is because of changing the oil filter on a Traverse.
That’s what I’ve been told, but that’s the PG-rated term. Usually the techs talking about it will use more colorful and heated language describing it. Appropriately, too.
Funny enough, I had an Acadia too. Unbolt the vacuum pump from the cross member above the radiator and lots of room (but you had to let it cool down because of the exhaust). Messy AF as oil went everywhere, but easy.
Anytime the oil filter and drainplug are not at the front of the car (so far only an Audi 5000 isn’t guilty). It’s even worse when the filter is installed open side facing down.
Yeah I can do the oil changes on my 2.0t and 3.0t without jacking the car up thanks to the plug being so far forward.
I had a 1973 Chevrolet with a 250 inline six. The air conditioner compressor was mounted over the #1 and #2 spark plugs. You had to remove the compressor to get the plugs out.
My 1993 Miata has the rare (ish) MSSS1 stereo system. I wanted to keep it stock, so I pulled the head and sent if for restoration. Pulling the MSSS1 head will break your will. The regular stock stereo leaves space underneath for a change tray that also happens to give you access to the plugs in the back. The MSSS1 takes up all of that space, so the only way to access all the plugs in the back is by removing the glove box and bending your arm around in ways it shouldn’t bend so you can get back there with zero leverage to actually pull those plugs.
I was only able to pull mine out thanks to help from my daughter and her impossibly skinny arms. And putting it back in was just as fun. Worth it tho. It’s such a cool stereo (with the tape deck and CD player, plus the in-seat transducers shaking the seats to simulate bass), plus the Youtuber who restored it added a hidden Bluetooth module.
My B5 S4, everything!! Damn Germans don’t have a word for simple.
I feel for you. At one time I bought a ’99 B5 1.8T A4 Avant Quattro. I’m a BMW guy, but I wanted to see how the VAG side lived. I hated that car. Let’s see…
I think I’ll stop there.
(disclaimer, i have owned 5 cars and 4 have been VW/Audi)
My wrenching experience on mine has been that sometimes you need to remove a bit more than you would on something like a truck, but once you commit to not trying to skip removing stuff it goes really easy.
That sounds like a B5. It’s amazing after a while how quickly you can get the car in “service position”
Previous B5 non S4 owner of 2 of them. Did clutch in both. Mentally scarred me for life.
I just pulled the motor to do my clutch. There was always some other work that you had to do and it was easier with the whole drivetrain out. I pulled the motor 4! times in that car.
OMG, that’s horrible. At the time, I did not have the best garage solution. I’m done with AWD clutches at this point. I need to do my 2wd pickup and 2wd Caddy, but they are just so much easier to deal with.
My 2011 CR-V starter…you either have to jack the car up and take off the underbody plastic shielding, then move some lines out of the way and reach in there to blindly undo the bolts you can only feel and not see, or you can get to it from above if you take off the manifold, replace the seals, and are not afraid to oopsie and drop something into the exposed engine while the manifold is off.
I’ve got 2. My mom’s old Rodeo with the GM V6 under the hood had a bracket on the back of the engine that prevented removing the intake manifold. Since leaking manifold gaskets was a known issue on this truck it needed to be removed. For whatever the hell damn reason either GM or Isuzu decided to use Allen bolts on that bracket. The bracket was right up against the firewall so no clearance to actually get an allen wrench in there to loosen them. I ended up cutting 1cm off the end of my allen wrench, popping that in the allen bolt, then using a regular wrench to turn that nubbin of the allen wrench sticking out. I threw those damn allen bolts away and bought 2 normal hex bolts when it came to reassemble that mess.
The 2nd is the gear indicator switch on my 1984 Honda Nighthawk 700S. It’s held in with 4 or 5 bolts, I forget how many, but much like the dentists who recommend chewing Trident one of them insists on being disagreeable. The others come out easy peasy but that one hits the frame and can’t back out enough to actually remove it without unbolting the entire friggin engine and jacking it up a smidge. Behind this cover is a tiny O-ring that leaks, is impossible to replace without getting it all twisted up while that cover is on the engine, and ultimately just gets packed full of RTV to try to stop the leak.
My go-to hand-wringing story has to be the 1989 Firebird I used to own and everything about it’s freaking headlights.
Just changing a headlight should have been simply since it’s the standard rectangular plug-in ones that dominate the 80’s, but in order to get to the headlight you need to crank up the pop-up headlight mechanism, unscrew torx screws holding the black plastic surrounding the headlight, then try to do an impossible dance to wiggle that stupid piece of plastic off of the headlight for reasons I cannot fathom. They literally could have made the plastic piece two millimeters smaller and it would slip right off, but NOOOOOOO…
Now… good luck unplugging that headlight and wiggling it out of there even with the extra access you got by wiggling that black plastic out (and scratching your paint in the process because of course you did).
And don’t get me started if you have to change out the pop-up headlight motors (which you will because they fail frequently). Access to them is frustrating for the reasons above, plus they have their own hard-to-reach issues, including the driver’s side motor… whose plug is buried where you can’t see or touch it without sending in Alvin the deep sea submarine.
I had a 4th Gen Trans Am and it’s pop-up headlights had NONE of these problems and it’s design was even curvier. Why did the 3rd gen have to be so over-complicated?
And I love 3rd gens. But if I ever get one again it will be a Camaro. Those headlights are only slightly maddening to get to since of course they don’t just slight right out and clear the plastic nose.
My old 2009 Kia Rio’s alternator was not removable from above, you had to raise the car and remove it from below.
Also, to actually get it out required removing the oil plug and draining the pan.
It was a giant pain in the ass for what I generally consider a pretty simple job.
Volvo Heater/AC fan. On the ones we own (87 240, 08 XC70) to change it out you have to remove a metric crap ton of components of the dash & center console (plus the seats on the 240)to get at the housing. On the XC70 you then have to get a special tool and a friend to help release to old one.
I have done two 240 heater fans. The first time, I did it the “right” way, and disassembled the heater box. The second time – I cut a hole in the side of the damned thing, and duct-taped it back after. Much, much, simpler, worked just fine with a lot less blood. Whatever drunken Swede designed that heater box held together with spring clips needs a good beating.
There is really a lot of stupid in 240s that was removed in the 740 and up. A big part of it being 240s were never really designed to be what they were at the end, they just sort of evolved.
700/900/90-series Volvos are far superior to the 200-series in pretty much every way, and I cannot be convinced otherwise.
Because you are correct! Having owned a baker’s dozen of RWD Volvos, about the ONLY things I like better about 240s is the steering feel and the headroom (lacking for those of us long of torso in 7/9s with sunroofs, and nearly ALL of them have sunroofs).
The fan on one of my relative’s XC90 makes noise between low and mid fan speed, it’s a common problem I’ve heard. I’m sure it also requires removing the entire dashboard to fix
Things I’ve complained about before: 1972 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with 455
The fan shroud blocks access to the fan bolts. The fan shroud is one piece, meaning fan and shroud must be removed together.
Speaking of cooling, the water pump has a stud that requires moving the power steering pump. The power steering has a stud that requires moving the alternator.
The fuel lines are run down the passenger frame rail. The floor pan nearly blocks any access to those bolts. Bonus: at the rear, access is further blocked by the lower control arm.
If the lower dashboard must be removed, it must be done in sequence: the driver’s side 20%, the still driver’s side 20%, then the passenger side 60%. Needless to say, the passenger panel is a bit unwieldy.
Any vehicle that requires a subframe drop, body off frame, or engine-out procedure in order to lift off a cylinder head and/or doing timing chain work.
Oil filter location on 2012-era Outback 2.5L.
Right up about 8″ deep in between the exhaust headers. If you didn’t get knuckle burns getting the filter socket on, you’ll get them when you flinch because of the hot oil dripping down your arm when you break the seal on the filter.
And I just can’t find a filter wrench that fits nicely on that size filter, so if the shop happens to crank it down just a bit, there’s not a lot you can do to get more torque on it.
On my GTI? That I have to open the door in order to pop the hood. I can’t just reach through the window, because the release handle is physically blocked by the door panel.
On my Pacifica? The plastic oil filter/cooler assembly that is so easily damaged, causing a hard to clean up oil leak.
I think that’s actually done intentionally as a safety/security interlock. Prevents accidental opening when driving and also means that if someone opens the door to open the hood while the security system is armed it sets off the alarm.
Whatever the reason it’s annoying, and most other vehicles I deal with don’t have that “feature”.